With nearly 30 years in game development and a career spent crafting unique gaming experiences like Deus Ex and Epic Mickey, Warren Spector has been chosen to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 12th annual Game Developers Choice Awards.

The annual peer-selected award will honor Spector's many contributions to the science and art of game development, from his early days working on TSR's Top Secret/S.I. and Origin's Ultima series to the creation of Deus Ex, widely considered one of the greatest PC games of all time. In the role-playing genre in particular Spector has been instrumental in opening new avenues of thought and design, paving the way for today's popular action role-playing hybrids.

As Meggan Scavio, general manager of GDC Events at UBM TechWeb, put it in the official announcement: "Warren, whose rarified, ‘big picture' thinking and ideals have done a great deal for the games industry, exemplifies the exact qualities that a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient should possess. In presenting him with this honor, we continue a tradition of highlighting individuals whose work stands as a benchmark for the next generation of developers."